NPR’s Hannah Hagemann spoke with me as part of a Weekend Edition Sunday story on California’s climate policies. As I told Hannah, all the good news is in the electricity sector, where the state’s clean energy policies have cut emissions dramatically over the last fifteen years. But California has struggled to cut emissions the industrial and transportation sectors. Not only are the relevant technologies lagging the cost declines in the wind and solar industries, but the intersection of transportation, housing, and affordability issues makes the challenge of controlling pollution from cars and trucks even more difficult. (It doesn’t help that the Trump Administration revoked California’s longstanding right to set its own pollution standards in this area, either—the outcome of that attack that will be resolved in the courtroom, if not overtaken by the 2020 election first.)
For a deeper dive into the state’s experience reaching its 2020 climate goal early, check out this new paper in Energy Policy, which I co-authored with Mike Mastrandrea and Mason Inman.